Determinants of Tourism Collaboration Member Satisfaction in Thailand

Abstract

Enhancing tourism collaboration effectiveness is a key goal for tourism industry leaders. However, there has been limited research into developing and measuring collaboration success, including how satisfied do collaboration members feel about their achievements. In addition, most previous quantitative research uses small samples and single item measures. The purpose of this study was to develop a reliable measure of Collaboration Member Satisfaction and determine which key predictors account for member satisfaction. A sample of 161 collaboration members was drawn from four tourism collaborations in Northern Thailand. In a series of regression equations, it was found that overall, trust, communication quality, and perceived individual benefit had the most influence on member satisfaction. Participation quality, together with interdependency had an insignificant effect overall. However, when the sample was split between private and public groups it was found that perceived individual benefit and interdependency had strong effects for the public sector members. While for the private sector, communication quality and participation quality had enhanced effects.